Yahoo Buying New Smartphones for the Staff, but No BlackBerries

Marissa Mayer is making Yahoo look more and more like Google with each passing day, and now she's buying everyone a shiny new smartphone.

Recently appointed Yahoo CEO Mariss Mayer is instituting a new company policy called Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun!" according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider. Under the new policy, full and part time U.S. employees of Yahoo will be receiving their choice of the iPhone 5, Galaxy S III, HTC One X, EVO 4G LTE or Nokia Lumia 920.

In addition to buying the devices, Yahoo will also be covering the monthly plans for data and voice.

The possible casualty in this fight is that this means Yahoo is moving away from the company supplied BlackBerry devices, and they are not offered amongst the choices. As Mayer states in the memo, "we'd like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do." RIM can't be too happy about such a statement, but considering the declining market share of the BlackBerry line, it makes sense.

No word as to when the new phones will be arriving in employee hands, but seeing as some of the devices have not yet been released, it would appear it will be a staged rollout.

The thought process behind this initiative is

We have a very exciting update to share with you today – we are announcing Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun! As of today, Yahoo is moving off of blackberries as our corporate phones and on to smartphones in 22 countries. A few weeks ago, we said that we would look into smartphone penetration rates globally and take those rates into account when deciding on corporate phones. Ideally, we'd like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.

Moving forward, we'll offer you a choice of devices as well as provide monthly plans for the data and phone.